If you run a site that is accessible internationally, how can you ensure that you're always abiding by all nations laws? At what point can a country up and decide you're breaking one of their laws and they can start fining you?

You are confusing business and accessibility, I run a site that can be accessed from around the world, but only do business in the UK, so only have to abide by UK and pan-European law, if foreign governments do not like it they have the power to block the site locally but nothing else. Facebook has an office in Hamburg hence has to comply with German law.

Actually Hamburg is a so-called "free city" inside Germany (i.e., is not part of any state / land) due to its history as a free city since 1189. While technically it is a self-governing entity at the level of state, its name and real status is that of a "free and Hanseatic city".

Germany actually has industry. It's like how if a homeless bum owes $1000, he's never going to pay it, whereas an upper-middle-class guy with a job can owe $300,000 on a mortgage and another $20,000 on a car and still have a future ahead of him.

That works fine until this upper-middle-class guy's job is shipped over to some third-world shithole nation where the work is performed at a small fraction of the cost by somebody with an even smaller fraction of the skill doing a very horrible job at it. Now the upper-middle-class guy is $300,000 in debt and jobless. Since he was a manager for a few years, he no longer has any technical skills, and there are no management jobs available, so he's shit out of luck. Even if he took that job at Burger King, it'd still take him over 20 years to pay down that debt, and that's without spending money on anything else, and without taking into account the interest! Furthermore, thanks to "Free Trade" and their outsourcing blunder, the company he used to work for will go under in a few months, so he has no chance of ever going back there. He can't even start up his own business, because nobody is willing to lend him any more money given his current $300,000 debt load. Even though he's making absolutely no income, and the interest on his debt grows daily, he still needs to provide food and shelter for his family. He can't sell his house, because nobody else is financially sound enough to purchase it. Even worse, he can't sell his car because he lives in the suburbs where there is absolutely no public transit and the only way to get the basic necessities of life is to drive 20 km into the city. Welcome to America, circa 2011.

I have friends who have exactly this plan in mind. One is currently a secondary level science teacher, the other an Eastern Bloc / Asia specialist for a high-class tourism company. They plan on moving to China to teach English. You get paid UK-level wages, but pay China prices for everything. You're effectively a local millionaire.

I have friends who have exactly this plan in mind. One is currently a secondary level science teacher, the other an Eastern Bloc / Asia specialist for a high-class tourism company. They plan on moving to China to teach English. You get paid UK-level wages, but pay China prices for everything. You're effectively a local millionaire.

They fully understand that. They're more interested in having their government openly opposed to personal liberty instead of clandestinely eroding freedoms under flimsy and transparently vacuous premises, and having a very comfortable life of reasonable luxury.

This was addressed in the Steve Jobs biography. When asked why he didn't build factories in the US by Obama, he replied that even if he could get all the permits and stuff sorted out, he wouldn't be able to find 30 thousand or so engineers he'd need to keep the thing running.

This was addressed in the Steve Jobs biography. When asked why he didn't build factories in the US by Obama, he replied that even if he could get all the permits and stuff sorted out, he wouldn't be able to find 30 thousand or so engineers he'd need to keep the thing running.

Yeah, maybe if your definition of engineer is "someone who assembles an iToy".

He's not talking about engineers with 4 year degrees, he's talking about people with the technical training to operate and maintain factory equipment. You don't get that kind of training in college.

You're advocating essentially a "if you build it they will come" mentality. While it may work, it's not something a lot of people would bebt tens of billions of dollars on. That said, Apple could undertake the effort of training people themselves. I suspect they'd rather get their products made as soon as possibl

You are simply ignoring the simple fact that Americans are still buying Apple products, nevertheless your arguments.

I don't think he's ignoring that, Americans are just buying things made by the chinese.

If the Americans were so concerned with their jobs, they would agree to pay a bit more for Made In USA products.

Except that most things aren't 'Made in USA' anymore not because of consumer price choice but because making them offshore provides the company with better profit margins, just look at the enormous profit margins on Apple gear, they own ~7% of the PC market yet make ~35% of the profit, just google it. They also make the lion's share of the profit in the smartphone market despite having a comparatively small marketshare.

You are simply ignoring the simple fact that Americans are still buying Apple products, nevertheless your arguments.

If the Americans were so concerned with their jobs, they would agree to pay a bit more for Made In USA products.

But Americans don't get the choice between "made in China" and "made in the USA" iPhones. The problem is that companies have outsourced their manufacturing to China almost wholesale, there isn't anything much a consumer can do about that.

If they want to do business in Germany, they comply with German law. Not sure what's so difficult to understand on that point... wouldn't be the first time Facebook has had to adjust its practices to stay on the friendly side of the law. Actually, it wouldn't be the first time they've had to adjust their practices to comply with German law, at that. The reason you can hide your profile from search, among other privacy features you've been granted, are because of the orders of the German and Canadian privacy commissions....

You have it backwards. If German users want to use a US service, they can deal with how the service works as constituted in its home country. If the Germans don't want to use some service, they always have that option. This is legal fuckery, no more. Typical mommy government idiocy.

I'm no fan of Facebook -- quite the opposite, in fact, I outright despise them -- but again, my answer is not to use Facebook, not to try to tell them what they can or cannot do.

What you say would be true if FB didn't actually do business in Germany. The thing is, they do. They have offices in Hamburg, and they also do business with German advertisers, selling the information of German citizens. If they want to continue doing business in Germany, then they comply with German laws. Be grateful. This wouldn't be the first time some American company with no concept of consumer rights has tried to fuck over its customers, only to be thwarted by the laws of a country where they do business, and it certainly won't be the last. Perhaps you should be bitching about the state of privacy laws and individual rights in the US rather than about a sovereign nation enforcing its laws on companies seeking to do business in their jurisdiction.

If they were strictly a US site that happened to be accessible from Germany (like, for example, Slashdot), then perhaps what you say would have merit. The thing is, they aren't, and it doesn't. This isn't really any different from the US enforcing its laws on foreign companies... case in point, Bell Canada has to comply with SarbOx rules, because some of their stock gets traded through the NYSE. This is a company that doesn't have any customers outside of Canada, that doesn't offer service outside of Canada (doesn't even offer service to all of Canada), that doesn't buy services from providers outside of Canada, and that is majority owned by Canadians. By all judgements, they have even less to do with the US than Facebook has to do with Germany, but because they trade on the NYSE, they have to comply with US trade rules, and the only way to not comply with rules like SarbOx would be to de-list from the NYSE. And yet nobody in the US is bitching about that, or the thousands of other examples of foreign companies that have to comply with US laws to do business in the states. Hypocrisy much?

They have offices in Hamburg, and they also do business with German advertisers, selling the information of German citizens.

Easily rectified. Hopefully that's exactly what will happen. Let's see if FB, a company of enfeebled, ethics-free idiots if there ever was one, has the sense to figure it out. In the meantime, Germans can continue to shoot themselves in the foot all they want.

That's a mistake that can be easily rectified. Facebook can, and hopefully will, remove their sub-agency from your country. It isn't relevant to the issue at hand, which is FB is an American operation, not a German one.

yes we are in agreeance. they can stop doing business in Germany if they wish to not comply with German laws. we are also in agreeance that it would be a good thing if they did stop doing business in Germany.

It isn't relevant to the issue at hand, which is FB is an American operation, not a German one.

How is the fact that they do business in Germany not-relevant to the fact that they do not wish to comply with German laws???

No, you have it backwards, your hatred of government has blinded you to the simple truth.

If someone lives in Germany and uses Facebook in Germany they both have to follow German laws, not US ones. And the German person does indeed have the option not to use Facebook, just as Facebook have the option not to operate in Germany at all if they can't follow its laws.

Think of Microsoft getting fined by the EU.for their monopolistic practices. The EU didn't do this on the basis of what laws Microsoft broke

Hamburg, GermanyOur German office is located in beautiful downtown Hamburg, surrounded by splendid shopping opportunities we are also just few minutes walk from the vibrant harbor area and the most infamous part of town - St. Pauli!Open PositionsAccount Management (1)

Way to miss the point. Listen up, moron. The question is, why bother with the German physical presence. The internet is connected everywhere. It just doesn't make sense to me why they want the German physical presence.

Just maybe they don't want to offer Facebook to all the world outside the USA without any advertising revenue. Maybe they want to advertise German companies to German users of facebook

Well fortunately you are not in the business of being a multi-national corp. So it doesn't need to make sense to you.

Facebook don't allow German people accounts simply to be nice and have a global presence. They do it to make money from companies who want to advertise to those users. If you want to make money in a country, particularly one with a big economy like Germany, it's a whole lot easier if you have a registered company in that country. That usually means employing people and having an office.

Exactly, it's no use to Facebook having all their German/EU members just go through Facebook.com in the US.

US advertisers arent't going to pay to advertise Californian pickup truck deals or cheap Kentucky real estate to Belgians, and the same the other way round.

So they have decided to have a physical European presence, sell German language advertising and use a German Facebook.de web address and so on. At that point, they can't pretend they only operate in the US.

The office that threatens to sue is not that of a politician but that of the data protection officer of the State (not city!) of Hamburg. This is not about politicians playing web sheriffs, this is about upholding the law.
Some of our data protection laws are slightly overreaching and collide with practical IT needs - server operators who fall under German jurisdiction may not even store IP adresses of visitors, so the stock Apache logging settings violate our laws - but overall our personally identifiable information enjoys strong protection. Several state DPO's are taking initiative against things like Facebook's Like button being embedded into websites, and I clearly see this as a good thing.

You know that office isn't what you connect to when you connect to Facebook?

You're getting a bit desperate now.

No, that physical office in Hamburg employing German citizens to sell advertising space on Facebook's German website may indeed not physically house the actual server where Facebook.de is stored, but so what?

That's fine. You aren't advertising in the UK, you aren't trying to do business with me. If I order something from you, and give you a UK shipping address, it's my problem to deal with the import duty, which I have done when ordering from ThinkGeek. But Facebook clearly are deliberately doing business with German consumers and German companies, so they have to play by German rules when doing so. Same as you have to deal with Massachusetts laws, this "internet thing" doesn't make you immune to that, and it d

This isn't all of Germany. This is a city-state. This is more similar to the whole Amazon sales tax issue here in the USA. Jus't because your people access/buy/sale things on a site; does not mean that you have the right to control that site. I'm anti-corporation all the way, I'm just also anti-government totalitarianism too.

No, this is not a local issue, the reason Hamburg is doing this is because the headquarters of Facebook Germany are in Hamburg, so the Hamburg Data Protection Officer is the one that has to deal with a company that is breaking the law, if a German company based in NY breaks the law it is the duty of the NY Procecution office to deal with it, not the duty of congress is it ?

This happens a lot... and it can get into major overhead. The place I used to work had to go through special hoops to get a workplace training system with questions and answers approved by the German Works Council because we collected a worker ID and could track what answers they selected for questions. We were using it to track what questions were missed the most, but being able to find out what employee answered incorrectly was a concern.

There was also a situation in dealing with Quebec and ensuring that French was listed before English because they have some law that felt it important to violate the alphabetical sorting of language text.

This happens a lot... and it can get into major overhead. The place I used to work had to go through special hoops to get a workplace training system with questions and answers approved by the German Works Council because we collected a worker ID and could track what answers they selected for questions. We were using it to track what questions were missed the most, but being able to find out what employee answered incorrectly was a concern.

There was also a situation in dealing with Quebec and ensuring that French was listed before English because they have some law that felt it important to violate the alphabetical sorting of language text.

So really, the whole world should just have exactly the same laws as the US?

In comparison it does not seem to matter: Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity [wikipedia.org] - according to the first diagram the productivity in the US and Germany is quite comparable despite the much stricter data protection laws.

These privacy laws define constitutional rights in Germany, so the interests of the corporations to maximize profit are lower ranked (as they are not on constitutional level).

I remember having to modify some production reports for use in Germany so that individual operators could not be identified. Not a big deal to do, but it made me wonder what sort of law would allow unproductive workers to hide behind data protection...

That would be the sort of law that gives workers protection at the expense of big corporations being able to do what they want. You would probably call it socialism, the rest of us would say it was a partial attempt to redress the power balance between employer and emloyee, which is hugely slanted in favour of the employer in a capitalist economy.

Mod parent up! You're absolutely right. Facebook is an American-based company, and German citizens have to voluntarily visit facebook.com, taking them to the American site, then set up an account, and then supply them with information. That American company shouldn't then be hauled into a German court and ordered to restructure it's website to meet German standards. China doesn't like Facebook's model, so they block the website; they don't try to dictate how Facebook should run its business.

Yes, certainly. Facebook could pull their physical presence from Hamburg (though that would include any servers etc.), so long as other German states or the Federal Government don't decide to do the same. And if they do Facebook can simply pull their physical presence from Germany entirely and be fine. For whatever reason, Facebook have chosen to have a physical office in Hamburg, so I imagine they won't be too keen doing that (especially not for the measly sum of $400k), but it would be a clean solution...

All true. Someone else commented on a thread below that Germany (or the separate states) could target revenue streams from German businesses paying Facebook for adverts, for instance. I'd guess physical presence does make it a lot easier for you to be pulled into court, and it's noteworthy that the case is being called in Hamburg, where Facebook have their physical presence, but yes, you're right.

Facebook is an American-based company, and German citizens have to voluntarily visit facebook.com, taking them to the American site, then set up an account, and then supply them with information.

Or they can, y'know, go to facebook.de [facebook.de], the version that comes up on your screen auf Deutsch;-)

Actually, when I tried that URL in a firefox window, it bounced me to de-de.facebook.com, and nothing I tried could convince it otherwise. So I fired up one of the other dozen browsers that I have on this Mac, gave it facebook.de, and it's now showing the registration page - in German. It's also telling me "JavaScript ist in deinem Browser deaktiviert", which is correct for that browser.

China blocks sites that don't do what it wants so that sites that do what they want get the use. Facebook/Google etc all had the choice of caving and giving the Chinese government what they want or getting out of the market. That cannot possibly be taken as being better than what Hamburg has done here. Facebook has multiple options which would be easy to implement like disable all accounts in Hamburg, remove them from the recognition completely. As long as Facebook has offices in Germany, offers German lang

China blocks sites that don't do what it wants so that sites that do what they want get the use. Facebook/Google etc all had the choice of caving and giving the Chinese government what they want or getting out of the market. That cannot possibly be taken as being better than what Hamburg has done here. Facebook has multiple options which would be easy to implement like disable all accounts in Hamburg, remove them from the recognition completely. As long as Facebook has offices in Germany, offers German language functionality, partners with German businesses for advertising etc it is naive at best to pretend they can act like German law should have no jurisdiction.

I doubt that Facebook naively believe any such thing, it's just the rabid right wing free market cheerleaders on places like slashdot that still seem to think the US are exempt from other countries' laws.

So, you're saying that Mercedes, BMW etc. don't need to built cars that comply with U.S. regulations in order to sell them in the U.S.A.? I very much doubt that.

You do business somewhere - you adhere to the regulations there.

In Germany those lobbyists and politicians that don't understand/like the internet, always argue (and that has become a ridiculed meme amongst nerds meanwhile) "Das Internet darf kein rechtsfreier Raum sein" ("The internet shouldn't allowed to be a lawless space"). To which those in

It's nearly impossible to block internet traffic unless you prohibit encryption and even then there is stenography(where you hide data in other data).

Block a domain name? Well there are alternative name servers.. very easy to setup. You can even mix and match them.

And while any website may prefer a local domain for a country there is nothing preventing anyone from setting up service for people that speak a language... not all German speakers are in Germany and nor are all English websites from the UK. Faceb

Presumably you are not from Germany. Privacy and data protection are regarded quite differently over here compared to, say the US. We had two totalitarian regimes in one century on German soil who drew most of their power from the insane amount of information they collected on individual citizens, and the last few months of public debate have been dominated by several data snooping and retention initiatives by our government and police, and this debate may well cost a few top-ranking politicians and public servants their seats/jobs.

People here regard information about themselves as their property. When Google announced the expansion of StreetView to Germany they brought a shitstorm upon themselves. Take a look around German cities in StreetView. A large number of houses had to be blurred out because of complaints by residents. Google very narrowly avoided concerted legal action from our federal and states' data protection officers. Facebook will have to follow the law or risk being banned. We had quite a few successful social networks here before Facebook opened up to international users. Right now they are barely keeping themselves afloat, but should Facebook be kicked out they would jump to fill the void with a legal alternative.

Facebook has fewer guns than the Nazis did - and the Nazis may have been enabled by information but they executed their plans by force, which is what one of the parties here (not Facebook) is doing.

But, anyway, I were Facebook, my response would be to disable the accounts of the Hamburg users and apologize for not having the desire to customize the platform to every locality's unique laws. Facebook could potentially be up against tens of thousands of micro-customizations here which would be hell to QA.

I just don't get what the problem is... How can anyone abuse street view and it's images of buildings? - I mean I've been to Germany more times than I can count and I've taken pictures of buildings (I love interesting architecture) a gazillion times with no hassle what so ever. I've even been allowed inside private yards and so on to take pictures from that angle as well, and still no problems. What harm can street view do? - It already blurs persons so it cannot be the risk of 'locating' individuals that's

I just don't get what the problem is... How can anyone abuse street view and it's images of buildings?

I did not say this behaviour was rational. I for one love StreetView, and I can only shake my head over those people who seriously fear its use by muggers, terrorists etc. But I understand where they are coming from.

On the other hand I run my own mail server because I do not trust any commercial provider to ensure the privacy of my messages. And I run pretty much overkill grade encryption between my mobile devices and my home network. Not that I had anything to hide, mind you, my life is just as "boring" as

You know that Facebook has an office in Hamburg and that they do business here and therefore fall under German jurisdiction, right? You know that Facebook collects data on members and non-members through embeddings in third-party websites which violates German law, right? You know that Facebook keeps changing its TOS and introducing new privacy-invading features after people signed up on what they thought were acceptable terms, which violates German law, right?

Granted - you and I also no ways around that. But Mom & Pop don't... and that's the point. They don't know that FB tracks them and even if they would, most of them have no idea how to avoid being tracked.

I don't understand - yeah, 420k is like nothing to facebook, but why would they ever pay? I.e., what can germany do to facebook?

Confiscate assets held in Germany? Including everything in their German offices and all their income going through German bank accounts (such as the fees they charge German advertisers for serving up German advertisements -- sorry, sponsored links -- to German customers)?

Well first of all I really doubt FB would suspect all German accounts. Remember, to them customers are products. Though I can see Facebook users rioting... Some undoubtedly would figure out ways around the block. It would advance proxy technology by a decade:D